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POP, or “Personal OPinion”, for what it’s worth…

Perhaps you read and remember an article dated Oct 24, 2006, www.sacbee.com, with comments by one of our own (Northern CA) civil and environmental engineering experts, Prof. Raymond Seed from UC Berkeley. Professor Seed’s research has had a significant impact on geotechnical practice in a number of areas including analysis of soil liquefaction potential and post-liquefaction behavior.

I grew up in New Orleans. The concept of liquefaction is only one of the similarities I noticed after I moved to the Bay Area/Silicon Valley in 1987: knowing that “north” and “south” mean different things to different people; having a Delta to discuss and enjoy; the French Quarter and Pier 39; rivers that overflow and towns that flood; etc.  In 1989, “I survived the Loma Prieta earthquake“, while working on the 2nd floor of the Embassy Suites in Burlingame, which I envisioned rolling and sinking right into the Bay with all of us inside. Liquefaction…

At a science conference presented by the CalFed Bay-Delta Program, Prof. Seed drew parallels between the recent New Orleans/Hurricane Katrina disaster and similar risks in California. The California Delta, for instance, is laced by 1,100 miles of levees, many built atop similarly unstable layers of organic matter (as in New Orleans). Those levees keep salty ocean water out of the (CA) Delta’s interior, helping to convey 60 percent of the state’s freshwater to more than 22 million people statewide. We have earthquakes, people, which could dissolve Delta levees by “liquefaction.” Multiple Delta levee failures would then cause seawater to contaminate our freshwater supply. Don’t take my word for it – check it out for yourself.

Think it can’t happen here? “In urban Sacramento, layers of porous sand exist beneath levees protecting thousands of people.” Think again. “Sacramento’s Natomas area is one place where seepage remains a persistent problem.” Uh-oh…seepage… that can’t be good. 

Consider this experiential wake-up call: Take a couple of days and drive the 100 + destroyed miles running between New Orleans, along the Gulf Coast, into Pascagoula MS – one and half years later – and imagine:

no water, no gasoline (Chevron? BP? Shell? 76?), no vehicle (NUMMI? Hummer?), no transportation (VTA? CalTrain? BART?), no favorite speciality food store to visit, no electricity (PG&E?), no phones (AT&T?), no Internet access (E-Bay? Cisco? Google?), no schools, no churches; thousands and thousands of homeless or displaced people including children and pets. No clean drinking water, no toilet to flush, no shower or tub for bathing. For days … and weeks … and months.

Blows your mind, doesn’t it?  Get involved, speak up, ask hard questions, and “live loud”!

Happy New Year!   from KC Costa, CA Chapter Director, levees.org

Engineers criticize holes in the analysis, which could affect waterways from Florida to the Sacramento Delta.

The suspect levees stretch from Florida’s Lake Okeechobee to the rivers of California’s Central Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which has 2,300 miles of levees that protect cities and farmland.

The Corps’ investigation is essential to understanding California’s situation, said Les Harter, the levee chief at the CA Department of Water Resources. “The floodwalls in New Orleans were 15 years old, and they failed,” Harter said. “Our levees (CA) are 100 years old. We estimate we have one-half the level of protection that New Orleans had.”

Perhaps the sharpest criticism has come from academicians led by two UC Berkeley engineering professors, Raymond Seed and Robert Bea. Since the early days after Katrina, Seed and Bea have dogged the Corps with their own technical investigation, financed with grants from the National Science Foundation. Bea, a pioneer in engineering risk analysis for the petroleum industry and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, thinks the Corps is failing to account for the biggest risk of all: the potential for human error in the design, construction and maintenance of levees.

To read this entire article, go to www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-levee31dec31